The Opiate, Winter Vol. 20
Lilly Lisa Youngblood
L
illy had eighty dollars and seventy-four cents with which to make a new life. She knew it wouldn’t last and she would eventually crawl home, tail between her legs, and her husband would open the door and tell her he loved her and make promises he would, soon enough, break. But that was a thought for another day. Today was a day for freedom, possibility and hope, and she did not intend to waste it. And then the baby cried. Lilly glanced in the rearview mirror. Jesse sat strapped in his car seat, huddled under his blanket, a pacifier sitting helplessly on his foot. She spoke to him in a soft, lyrical voice and he settled, finally finding his thumb and thrusting it into his mouth. His cheeks pumped in and out like bagpipes. Lilly returned her focus to the road. She hated the sound of a baby crying. Perhaps it was the pitch or the way her breasts spilled milk or the way it made her heart
10.
ache. Falling in love with children was risky business, totally at odds with self-preservation. That tug to stay home and protect, to educate, to discipline, all in hopes that they may one day escape their inevitable future. Senseless endeavors when Jesus Himself could not change the course of their lives—nor the lives of anyone Lilly knew. But no, she thought. Not today. Today I will have hope. She thought on happier matters. She imagined a life where she might spend an afternoon on the shores of a beach with nothing to do but collect shells and listen to waves and nibble on a pimento cheese sandwich she had taken the time to wrap in foil and store in a small portable cooler. A world where she could sit by a fire and read a book and find a job where people called her by her full name and smiled at her and told her how much they appreciated her hard work. The images sifted in and out of her brain as pleasantly as a light summer rain, and she drove and drank in the landscape. Patches of concrete with wide shoulders
